Friday, 7 December 2018

If you’ve been trying to access Allo today, you probably were upset to find that an outage wasn’t letting messages go through and Google Assistant, which first launched on Allo, was not working either.

Following a report from 9to5Google about Google Allo's possible fate, Google released a blog post about the future of Allo, Duo, and Android Messages.

We want every single
Android device to have a
great default messaging
experience. We’ve been
working closely with the
mobile industry to
upgrade SMS so that
people around the world
can more easily enjoy
group chats, share high-
res photos, and get read
receipts on any Android
device.

Allo hasn’t been receiving attention from Google because several months ago, Google shifted development from Allo and Duo to focus on improving the Android Messages app going all in with RCS (Rich Service Communications), which is set to be the true successor to the outdated SMS (Short Message Service) default messaging service on Android.

In parallel, we built
Google Allo, a smart
messaging app, to help
you get more done in
your chats and express
yourself more easily. -
Given Messages’
continued momentum,
we’ve decided to stop
supporting Allo to focus
on Messages.

The last time Allo was updated on Android is January and the app has already shown signs
of aging with bugs and Google Drive restore is borked.

With so much competition for instant messaging apps available like Facebook, Telegram, WhatsApp, WeChat, and Line – just to name a few, it doesn’t make sense for Google to pursue Allo’s success when Android “Chat” and RCS is just around the corner.

Allo will continue to work
through March 2019 and
until then, you’ll be able
to export all of your
existing conversation
history from the app—
We've learned a lot from
Allo, particularly what’s
possible when you
incorporate machine
learning features, like the
Google Assistant, into
messaging.

As Google has done with previous platforms and services, it starts them up to learn the ins and outs until eventually Google applies what it learned from the failed product into a new one. In this case, many of Allo’s features were ported to Android Messages, the default SMS and soon-to-be RCS client on Android phones.